NZ Doctor
I often think about a conversation I had with a friend while she was studying public health a few years ago. She had her eyes opened by epidemiology and health policy papers and shared with her parents about the unfair and unjust outcomes for Māori. It went down like a lead balloon. Her well-educated Pākehā parents believed New Zealand was an egalitarian society with a publicly funded health system and conditions where anyone could thrive. Therefore, the only explanation for poor outcomes was personal failure, right?
I don’t know how she navigated the conversation and whether she ever went back to the topic with her parents. But I often think of it because so much of the rhetoric on achieving better outcomes for all New Zealanders – Shane Reti talking about the new health targets, Winston Peters saying “colour doesn’t matter – delivery does”,1 and David Seymour claiming programmes such as the Māori and Pacific Admissions Scheme at Auckland Medical School need to “stop discriminating”2 – all have a core assumption that what works for one works for all, and that we all have the same chance to thrive.
